For the first time, I will try back serial uboot, from mtd3 image via flash-write command.
No success, verify failed.
Then try to flash from original HP Uboot update file, and still no "happy end" ..
..and after reboot, I have "one nice piece of electo-garbage" .. oh yes, it is bricked...

We started "rescue mission" ....
Desolder flash, read images from working one, split it ... and try to flash via programer.
..but...
Desoldered flash is not accessible or read&verify errors ocured.
We try to erase it. After two (or three) forced retries, we have accessible flash.
After this "procedure", we have fully accessible, readable and writable flash ..

Not a lot of people have this device, so nobody has remined me to write section B :) It is possible, I just need to refresh my memory again and write it.

QuoteA. Installation from stock OS

Prerequisites

The Debian-4.4.0-kirkwood-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2 rootfs must be prepared in advance on a USB drive on a single Ext3 partition and already mounted in this box before starting installation. The installation steps below assume that the following 4 prerequisites have been met:

a. The rootfs was extracted as is, and step 4 in the Debian rootfs installation is skipped (since we are going to boot with new u-boot, don't append DTB to uImage).
b. The tarball uboot.2015.10-tld-2.t5325.bodhi.tar has been downloaded and place in the /boot folder of the USB rootfs
c. The USB rootfs will be the only USB drive mounted in the T5325 box.
d. The installation must be done while stock OS running.

This problem usually is not because of the new kernel or Debian version. It is usually because you might have not synched the disk before reboot, or the roofs filesystem was corrupted.

Please describe how did you create this rootfs, and which kernels have been installled in this rootfs since you created it, and what procedure used in doing that. Even better if you can post the entire log of what you done.

The full GNU/Linux system includes a rootfs and a kernel installed on that rootfs. The USB partition that you're booting with must contain a rootfs. And then it's up to you to install a kernel to run inside that rootfs. Or if you use my rootfs (Debian-4.4.0-kirkwood-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2) then the custom 4.4 kernel is already installed inside this rootfs.

You've download uImage and uInitrd only, but did not install the full kernel. For example, this is the installation command to install one of my customed kernels:

dpkg -i linux-image-4.8.0-kirkwood-tld-1_1.0_armel.deb

You can also run the Debian installer to install a mainline kernel (without patches as in my customed kernel).

When you download the uImage and uInitrd only, then sometime it will work. But a lot times it will not. Because the kernel headers might be different between versions.

Is there any way to unbrick a T5325? I issued a fw_setenv command from my completed install (bodhi's 4.4.0), and the device no longer brings up uboot. I confimed my cable setup works, as I have another T5325 that still brings up uboot and bootstraps properly. I'm wondering if I might've corrupted /dev/mtd0 by chance. I've spent the last 2 days lurking and reading on the forums (this and others) before posting something.

csulaguy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is there any way to unbrick a T5325? I issued a fw
> _setenv command from my completed install (bodhi's
> 4.4.0), and the device no longer brings up uboot.
> I confimed my cable setup works, as I have another
> T5325 that still brings up uboot and bootstraps pr
> operly. I'm wondering if I might've corrupted /dev
> /mtd0 by chance. I've spent the last 2 days lurkin
> g and reading on the forums (this and others) befo
> re posting something.

Sure, you can connect serial console and use UART booting (loading u-boot using kwboot) to boot the box.

I've gone back to older kernels to track this network problem in Debian. This problem (only exists in the HP T5325) is mainly because a wrong link speed (1 Gbps) was identified by the driver, while this box NIC is 100Mbps.

This problem requires us to work around using either 1 of 3 methods:

1. Unplug the ethernet cable and replug it in to get network connection at the correct link speed.

Most likely, a maintream network driver patch has inadvertenly changed the behavior of autonegotiation (which affects this box only). Kernel 4.10.9-kirkwood-tld-1 was the last one that we did not have this problem for HP T5325. So you could either work around using one of the 3 methods above, or downgrade to kernel 4.10.9-kirkwood-tld-1.

I'll see if I can patch it to get it working and include it in the next kernel release (I'm still waiting for a security patch to get to mainline).

You clearly must be using a previous version of the kirkwood-t5325.dtb file as a hexdump of that file distributed with both linux-4.13.5-kirkwood-tld-1 and linux-4.14.1-kirkwood-tld-1 shows the 'permanent u-boot env' twice and never mentions 'hp_env' at all.

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